I missed TAM again this year and it was doubly sad because Chuck Norris was there for a different event at the same hotel. Imagine the fun that could have taken place if he and I had met up. Alas, I’ll have to settle for reading his columns for amusement. His latest column is about the use of USAID funds to help renovate mosques overseas in order to build goodwill in other countries.

He cites news reports about a few million dollars being used for such purposes and list a bunch of smaller example around the world, which he’s quite upset about. And he asks the predictable question:

Where are the separatists of church and state when it comes to separating mosque and state?

Someone needs to teach Chuck to use that newfangled Google thingy. Americans United for Church and State didn’t just write a column objecting to such spending, they wrote a letter to the Obama administration and the head of USAID protesting the use of money for those purposes.

Norris continues:

The First Amendment provides citizens with the freedom to choose their religion; it doesn’t provide the federal government with the right to fund the building of mosques overseas. In fact, it specifically says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Funny that he thinks the Establishment Clause forbids spending money on mosques overseas but doesn’t forbid spending money in public schools to teach kids religious propaganda. He is on the advisory board for the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which puts out a blatantly unconstitutional curriculum for teaching about the Bible in schools.

Here’s my favorite part:

The federal government’s actions using taxpayers’ monies to build Islamic structures overseas during a recession brings me back to the wisdom of our fourth president, James Madison, who said, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”

It’s amusing that he waxes eloquent about the wisdom of James Madison. Bet he’d change his tune if he knew that Madison argued that things like military chaplaincies and declarations of days of prayer were unconstitutional — and wanted limits on how much property a church can buy.